Vyacheslav Sorokovskyi, expert on public services and monitoring of the Swiss-Ukrainian project “Decentralisation Support in Ukraine” (DESPRO), is convinced that AHs should now implement separate waste collection by concluding contracts for their removal with the largest number of inhabitants.

By Dmytro Synyak

On 1 January 2018, amendments to the legislation, regulating another waste management procedure, came into force. It was widely discussed yesterday in the capital at a conference on the topic of “New waste management policy – the path to closed-loop economy”. The event was attended by the Government representatives, MPs, representatives of the public, business, international organisations and expert circles, etc. The participants discussed the results of implementation of the National Waste Management Strategy, new draft laws on waste management, which should become laws in the autumn of this year. Vyacheslav Sorokovskyi, expert on public services and monitoring of the Swiss-Ukrainian project “Decentralisation Support in Ukraine” (DESPRO), spoke about how hromadas can prepare for these global changes.

According to him, the creation of so-called coverage zones, or clusters, will become one of the components of the regional plans. It is foreseen that there will be about 150 of them Ukraine, i.e. 5-6 clusters per oblast. These clusters will be created in such a way that their waste management is economically feasible. In other words, everything will be organised the way so that waste removal and processing on the ground were profitable.

According to the provisions of the National Waste Management Strategy, regional plans must be developed within two years of the Strategy's entry into force. At the same time, their development requires a legislative basis, which does not currently exist. However, Vyacheslav Sorokovskyi is convinced that in any case the existing waste management system will be changed, since it has long been outdated. Ukraine should not allocate 7% of its territory to landfills, the vast majority of which are already overloaded, and sometimes dangerous.

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